GFMD and global partnership for women’s safe migrationThe foreign ministry of Bangladesh recently briefed the heads of diplomatic missions in Dhaka on the upcoming 3-day ninth summit of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) to be held on December 10-12, 2016. The theme of this year’s summit is: “Migration that works for Sustainable […]
Simplifying the recruitment process and easing restrictions will help Nepalis working in Afghanistan more than a blanket ban Dhan Singh Dhami could have been at his duty station as a security guard in Afghanistan by now, but a four-month ban on Nepalis working in the war-torn country delayed his plan. After the death of 13 […]
In May 2016, while flying to Malaysia, I met Sohel. A 20-year-old boy from Barishal, the southern coastal district of Bangladesh, He was on the flight because he had been promised a well-paying job once he reached Malayasia by a labour broker in his village. For this verbal agreement, the broker took four hundred thousand […]
Man Bahadur Limbu went to Malaysia in 2002, hoping to escape poverty and war. He worked in a factory for four years and was allowed to visit his family only once, in 2004. He endured the burden of a loan, inhuman working conditions and separation from family. Man Bahadur, a fifth-grade dropout, ploughed his savings […]
Migration has not always been merely flocking of workers. There has been migration of art and culture too. Here in Kerala, the southern state in India, Subratho a migrant worker hailing from West Bengal has become an actor in theatre. Subratho has been working as a cook in Pattambi. Realising his penchant in acting an armature […]
In the Al Quoz industrial area of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a number of medium and large-sized buses can be spotted transporting workers clad in company uniforms to distant worksites early in the morning. In the evening or, in certain cases, late at night, these workers are brought back to labour camps […]
Long before the earthquake hit last year, the districts around Kathmandu were already hotbeds of trafficking Charimaya Tamang was just 16 when she was drugged, trafficked and sold into a brothel in India. She was rescued, and returned to Nepal in 1996. Twenty years later, Nepal has introduced multiple measures, most importantly the 1998 National […]
Indian migrant labourers in Jordon and other West Asian countries have little to hope for unless there is considerable labour reform. For millions of Indians who travel to the Gulf and other West Asian countries for work, the kafala (sponsor) system is a known devil. As per the system, which operates right across the region, […]
Sale of work visas in black market plays havoc with the lives of migrant workers Foreign remittances sent by Pakistanis working abroad are around six per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and hint at the huge number of labour migrants who have left for foreign lands to earn their livelihood. If we […]